Subspace Projection-Based Collision Detection for Physical Interaction Tasks of Collaborative Robots

• Published in: International journal of precision engineering and manufacturing Vol. 20; no. 7; pp. 1119 - 1126
• Main Authors: Lee, Sang-Duck, Ahn, Kuk-Hyun, Song, Jae-Bok
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul Korean Society for Precision Engineering 01.07.2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Collaboration; Engineering; Industrial and Production Engineering; Materials Science; Regular Paper; Robot arms; Robots; Unknown environments; Collision safety; Physical interaction tasks; Human–robot collaboration; Collaborative robots
• ISSN: 2234-7593; 2005-4602
• DOI: 10.1007/s12541-019-00130-z

In recent years, various collision detection methods have been proposed for safe human–robot collaboration; these methods are usually model-based. However, most tasks conducted by collaborative robots involve a physical robot–environment interaction, and it is very difficult to design a model of such interaction that varies depending on the external environment. Therefore, this study proposes a method for detecting collision between a human and a robot while the robot executes a task involving physical interaction with an unknown environment. To this end, a collision detection index is suggested based on the subspace projection technique. The proposed collision detection scheme is verified experimentally using a 7-DOF robot arm, and the experimental results show that collisions can be detected reliably by the proposed method.